This blog site initially focused on renewable energy and the environment. But that was SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth. My next book, SS for Humanity, opened the subject area to everything else, including SETI, the afterlife, travel and cuisine. However, I still provide, now and then, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS.

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Thursday, June 13, 2013

IS OTEC THE MOST PROMISING FUTURE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY OPTION?

Jim Baird referred me to his posting today in The Energy Collective on the promise of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). I've been saying most of this for forty years or so, so it's nice to gain some respected company. Let me summarize some of his highlights:

1. First he cites Wikipedia and provides the most optimistic assessment of proven fossil fuel reserves in years (at current use):

coal: 417

oil: 43

natural gas 167

2. Then, quoted is Eric Davidson, president of Woods Hole Research Center:

If we burn all known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, we will warm the earth by more than ten degrees F, creating a world unfit for civilization...

Baird uses USEIA info from 2006, but if you just look in the column to the right, presented is the energy consumption in real time, and the data really have not changed that much, for he indicates that fossil fuels account for 87% (it is now 88%) and the total terawatts being consumed as 15.71 (now 15.93), so let's just use 16 TW as the power continuously being used by humanity today.

Martin Hoffert estimates we will be using 30 TW by 2050, and we will just about be out of oil at current usage. The International Energy Agency forecasted an investment of $8 trillion by the oil industry to maintain current production until 2038. But why would an investor spend so much money of a commodity that would be soon to disappear. Then there will be those scary global warming implications.

Forget fusion for a long time. Even with Fukushima, if we are forced to expand nuclear by a factor of five, that would only be around 5 TW, and fission is so inefficient that 10 TW of heat would be added towards global warming. Delete nuclear for now.

How much renewable energy do we have available? Where can we find 14 TW?

hydroelectricity: we're close to tapped out, and consider the NIMBY (not in my backyard) and environmental issues

geothermal energy: a maximum of 2 TW might be possible

biomass: there are too many food and water shortage problems for now

tidal energy: 0.12 TW

wavepower: 3.7 TW (hugely optimistic)

OTEC: 25 TW

Thus, OTEC is the only of the above options with any kind of chance for making a real contribution. The especial advantage of OTEC is the cornucopia of co-products, not only electricity. Termed the Blue Revolution, here is part of my message today to Joe Quirk, who is (has completed?) writing a book for the Seasteading Institute on this subject:

So, as you say, this upwelled fluid from OTEC is like free fertilizer for marine bio-growth. Add the fact that this deep ocean fluid is essentially pathogen free, and you eliminate yet another problem land aquaculture faces. Even more attractive is the fact you also have free irrigation, and, as presently conformed, free space. And that's not all, folks! Under controlled conditions (we might need to add some iron), some of us think we can suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to remediate global warming. Finally, these productive floating platforms will someday be placed at the equator to maximize the warm temperature, and guess what? No hurricane has ever gone through the equator. There is a safe region around the equator with no major storms.

I have published several articles in the Huffington Post on this subject, a typical one being Blue Revolution.

The above analysis is in terms of power, which is energy divided by time, for the first question you might ask is why weren't solar and wind options mentioned. Keep in mind that solar and wind energies are intermittent, while much of the above is baseload. Some useful conversions for energy are:

one BTU equals about 1000 joules

one quadrillion BTU equals one Quad (Q) equals about about 1 exajoule (EJ)

Note that the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima was only around 15 kiloton, while the Tsar Hydrogen Bomba was 50,000 KT.

The above drawing shows that the incoming solar radiation is 174 Petawatts (10 followed by 14 zeros watts, or a thousand times a Terawatt), and 89 PWs are absorbed by Planet Earth. That's power. Regarding energy, almost 4 million Qs of sunlight impact our Earth each year. Basically, one hour of sunlight equals the energy used by civilization in one year. In one year the solar energy reaching our surface is equal to all the energy to ever be obtained from coal, oil, natural gas and mined-uranium. The total wind energy available is in the range of two thousand Q/year. Photosynthesis is responsible for three thousand Q/year. The maximum potential of biomass is perhaps 300 Q/year. A rough rule of thumb is that humanity uses 500 Q or 500 EJ per year. These units kind of get to you, but this is the life of a solar engineer.

Our kind (Homo sapiens) began to evolve perhaps 200,000 years ago. Planet Earth has another five billion years before our Sun becomes a Red Giant and consumes us. At current usage, all the fossil fuels and uranium will run out within a millennium, and perhaps less than a century under bad case scenarios. The future of Humanity on Planet Earth will clearly be a delicate balance of population, lifestyle and renewable resources. We overcame the Cold War where a nuclear winter was a button push away. If we survive global warming, I have long predicted that a sustainable population living at least at the level of an American lifestyle will not be 7 billion, but something closer to one billion.

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WE MUST TAKE ACTION ON GLOBAL WARMING NOW!

Last year surpassed 2014 as the warmest year on record since the mid to late 19th century. Global sea level also rose to a new high, 2.75 inches higher than in 1993, when record-keeping began. Tropical cyclones were 25% higher than the average. The Arctic is melting, severely.

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF OIL?

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Click on:
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to gain a sense of what the financial community thinks will be the future price of crude oil. When I last viewed this Chicago Board of Trade (a NYMEX company) future contracts page on 110March2014, the futures price of oil in December 2022 was $78.59. This makes no sense to me.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX AND THE INFLATION RATE

The CPI is based on 1984 at 100. Thus, 241 means a 241% inflation since 1984.
There are various ways to look at this, but one is to subtract 100 from 241, getting 141, so the effective inflation today, nearly a third of a century later, is 141% higher. Another comparison is that the CPI in 1916 was 10.9, and is at 240.853 today, a hundred years later. Thus, the average commodity that sold for a buck then, today goes for $22.

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ABOUT ME

I am Director Emeritus of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii and co-founder of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research.
I have published three SIMPLE SOLUTION books and have written more than 100 articles for the HUFFINGTON POST. I am working with an enlightened team to pioneer the BLUE REVOLUTION (http://bluerevolutionhawaii.blogspot.com/),
beginning with the development of the Pacific International Ocean Station.